


Sibling Rivalry

by litsasecret



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Sibling Rivalry, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-21
Updated: 2010-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litsasecret/pseuds/litsasecret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy can't help feeling jealous of the fact that Adam pays attention to everyone everywhere. Neil claims to have a solution to all of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sibling Rivalry

It was irrational, he knew, to want to kill every member of the audience. After that kiss, where he forgot where he was (and he _knew_ Adam hadn’t been as caught up in it as he had, and he shouldn’t have gotten so overwhelmed in the first place) Adam had just pulled away with a lazy smile and slinked down the stairs and forgotten Tommy even existed.

And Tommy was furious, blind with unadulterated jealousy, and he had to hold himself back while Adam went out to meet with them and sign things and pose for pictures and kiss cheeks and everything.

What Tommy really needed was a cold shower; certainly not to go out and stake his claim or something.

Because, hey, he had to face it sometime-- _he had no claim._

After a few minutes of lurking in the wings and scowling at the people handling his amps, Neil came up behind him.

“You okay?” Neil asked, sounding annoyed. “Because unless you’re dying, I’ve got a score of girls who are wondering where you are because they paid good money or worked _super hard_ to win their meet and greet passes, and you aren’t there.”

Tommy turned slightly to look at Neil. “Yeah, okay, sorry, I’m coming.”

Neil scowled, then grabbed his chin and pulled his head around, examining him minutely.

“Fuck,” Neil said. “I thought I could count on you of all people to not get all starry-eyed over my fucking brother.”

Tommy stared at him. He wanted to say a lot of things, like: ‘did you _see_ that kiss?’, or maybe ‘fuck you right back, okay!’

Instead he felt embarrassment coloring his cheeks and he mumbled, “Sorry”, before pulling away and moving toward the M&G room.

“Hey,” Neil called, striding to catch up with him. “Hey!”

Tommy stopped again. “What?” he snapped.

“Don’t be sorry, Tommy Joe, just be smart.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks,” he replied, and then he went into the room to be surrounded by grabby, emotive women who spoke heavily accented English and wanted _him_.

It should be awesome-- he was living the dream, right? But every time Adam laughed at something one of them said, he felt that same anger bubble up under his skin until he couldn’t stand it.

After a few minutes, Neil came over and grabbed Tommy’s arm. “Sorry,” Neil said. “Tommy wasn’t feeling well, and I made him come anyway, but I think we can all tell he just needs rest and lots of fluids, right? Let’s go.”

Tommy wanted to snicker at the ‘lots of fluids’ comment, but mostly it just depressed him that he'd pictured Adam as the fluid donor. He meekly let Neil haul him back out of the room.

Neil took him all the way to the hotel, handling driving in a foreign country full of one way streets and canals without guardrails with surprisingly little stress, finally parking in an above-ground garage next to their hotel and again manhandling Tommy out of the car, through reception, and up to a tiny room with two single beds pushed together to make a double.

“This is a four star hotel?” he asked, staring around the crowded room.

“Welcome to Europe, Adam said,” Neil replied. “At least they have Heineken,” he added, opening a cabinet to reveal the tiniest minibar ever stocked with ,5L cans of beer.

He took the one Neil offered him and knocked it back, coughing a little because it wasn’t exactly Coors Light.

Neil smirked at him, eyes bright. “Smooth,” he mocked, then took a long slug off his own before eying Tommy assessingly.

“Talk,” he said.

“Nothing to say,” Tommy replied, shrugging.

“Bull,” Neil said. “Talk. There’s something eating you up, and it’s solely my responsibility to ensure the smooth running of this tour. So talk.”

Tommy played with the tab on his can until it snapped off, then he looked back at Neil.

“I’ve got a crush on your brother,” he said. “You’ll understand why you’re the last person I want to talk about it with.”

Neil snorted. “Fuck that, who else’re you gonna talk to? Taylor? He’s just a kid, and Isaac’s sick in love with his wife, and everyone else will be well-meaning and go tell Adam straight off and you don’t want that, do you?”

Tommy flicked the tab across the room and stared at it where it had landed in the corner. It looked forlorn and pitiful, separated from its can and discarded like that.

Neil leaned over to pat his knee. “I’ll even try to pull off sympathetic, if it’ll help.”

Tommy snorted. “It’s just-- he’s right there, all the time, and he’s just... him, and it’s kind of overwhelming.”

Neil shifted a little. “Yeah, I get that. Story of my life, actually.”

“And then, he kisses me, and it’s all for show-- he just turns it off like that, and I know the right thing to do would be tell him that I _can’t_ , but I’m too selfish to lose that little bit of undivided attention I get. It’s stupid and greedy and pointless, I know, but--“

“Fucking emotions, how do they work,” Neil muttered, and it might have been agreement, but Tommy was kind of lost.

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it. So, Adam-lust; unrequited Adam-lust. Yeah, I’ve got nothing. Unless you want to have sex?”

Tommy was startled into looking up at him. “What?!” he demanded.

“You know, two warm bodies, alcohol, hotel room on someone else’s credit card? Sex.”

Tommy shoved his hair out of his eyes, then looked back at his can, sloshing it a little to judge how much he’d had.

“I’m not drunk enough for that,” he said, and then he finished the can and looked up at Neil with his best coy look.

“Sounds like a plan,” Neil said, setting his own can aside and reaching for the phone.

Tommy lay back on the bed and watched as Neil ordered lube and condoms from room service, smiling slightly when he hung up and said, “Benefits of someone else’s credit card,” before stripping off his shirt.

The sex was lazy good, and it was nice to not worry about the fans getting wind and sending death threats, or about Neil falling in love or something, and it was even nicer to just snuggle in someone’s arms and sleep in something resembling a real bed without the stress of whether he’d regret it in the morning.

Or, you know, it would have been, if about three hours later Adam hadn’t burst into the room in a panic because _Tommy was missing_. Tommy blinked up at Adam from his cocoon of blankets, and Neil’s arm tightened around his chest briefly before he burst into laughter, the noise echoing through his chest and surrounding Tommy.

He might have smiled, but then it hit him that it really wasn’t funny, after all.

“Uhm, hi Adam,” he said tentatively.

“You _fucked_ my bassist?” Adam demanded, his voice clicking a little in the upper register.

“Hey,” Tommy interjected, because hello, he was right there.

“It was surprisingly easy,” Neil snapped. “Apparently performing onstage with you is better than foreplay.”

“What?” Tommy asked, unable to disguise the hurt in his voice as he tried to roll over to look at Neil, because seriously? There was no strings attached and then there was... whatever the hell was going on here, and Tommy suddenly felt used.

He wondered if this was what girls meant when they talked about one night stands and low self-esteem, because fuck.

“I cannot believe you! You ruin everything that goes well for me,” Adam snarled. “You _hate_ me, admit it! All I ever do is be nice-- give you a fucking job, make it so thousands of women lust after you because you have the blessing of being born fucking _normal,_ and you go and _fuck my bassist?_ ”

“Well, someone needed to, and you certainly weren’t going to. I did you a fucking favor, you ungrateful bastard,” Neil said, and that was it. Tommy rolled out of the bed and scrambled for his clothes, biting his lip to keep from saying anything stupid, from bursting into tears, from doing _anything._

Adam helped him, handing him his shirt and his left shoe, but he kept glaring at Neil.

Adam waited until he was dressed to leave, holding the door for Tommy and giving him deep, meaningful glances as they walked down the hall together, and Tommy sighed.

“I’m not speaking to you,” he said.

“That’s totally understandable, I get that. Just, hear me out? I know it’ll be awkward, but we’ve got ten more dates. Please, _please_ don’t quit before then? I promise I won’t even _look_ at you, and Neil won’t be in the same room as you, or _anything._ ”

“Adam?” Tommy said quietly, interrupting him.

“Yeah?” Adam asked, despondent.

“I’m not quitting your band, you idiot.”

“Oh,” he said. “I mean, that’s good, that’s really good, but I kind of can’t fire Neil, my mom will _kill_ me, and--“

“And you can hardly tell her you’re firing him because we had sex. Yeah, I get it, it’s cool.”

He couldn’t quit the band-- he was just starting to get used to four star hotels and eating real food and having more than one friend at a time.

“But, I don’t want to be stuck in the middle of whatever fucked up sibling rivalry you two have going on again, because you know what? It’s not my deal, it’s yours.”

“Tommy, you have no idea how sorry I am,” Adam said. “If I’d had any idea--“

“The sex part is totally not your fault,” Tommy jumped in. “It’s all me-- I made my bed, and all of that. I just don’t want anything else to do with it.”

He hoped it hadn’t come across as him not wanting anything else to do with _Adam,_ but he didn’t try to clarify.

A walk of shame in a foreign hotel with the remnants of sex with someone’s brother’s still clinging to his skin was not exactly the ideal time to confess a crush, after all.

It would just make things even worse in the morning, and getting a shower and the chance to stare at the ceiling and hate himself seemed a little more urgent than convincing Adam that the only reason he’d let Neil fuck him was because he couldn’t have the real thing.


End file.
